To better understand educators’ views of social and emotional learning, the Education Week Research Center- with support from the Atlantic Philanthropies, the California Endowment, the NoVo Foundation, and the Raikes Foundation- conducted an online survey of users of edweek.org, Education Week’s flagship website. More than 500 teachers and school-based administrators responded to the survey, which was fielded in April 2015. The results presented in this report address a range of topics related to social and emotional learning, including educator perspectives, school conditions and context, preparation and training, and strategies and solutions. The report also contrasts a select set of findings from this survey with the results of previous surveys that the research center administered in 2012 and 2014.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative will enter a critical period during the 2014-15 school year. Several states have recently reversed course on adoption of the mathematics and English/language arts standards, as vocal opposition gains prominence elsewhere. Despite fraying of the two national consortia developing assessments tied to the new standards, schools are preparing for the first full-scale administration of those common-core-aligned tests. All the while, educators continue their efforts to put the standards into practice. Against this dynamic backdrop, the Education Week Research Center takes stock of educators' readiness to teach the common core, their access to high-quality curricular materials and training, and their students' readiness to master the demands of the new standards. The report—From Adoption to Practice: Teacher Perspectives on the Common Core—draws on a national survey of teachers fielded during the 2013-14 school year, and follows a similar survey conducted a year earlier.

To learn more about educators’ views regarding student engagement and motivation, the Education Week Research Center—with support from the Atlantic Philanthropies, the California Endowment, the NoVo Foundation, and the Raikes Foundation—conducted a survey of registered users of edweek.org, Education Week’s flagship website. More than 500 teachers and school-based administrators responded to the survey, which was fielded in April 2014. The survey results presented in this report offer important insights into: educators’ perspectives on issues related to student engagement and motivation; the levels of engagement and motivation among students at respondents’ schools; potential strategies and solutions; and a range of related topics.

Based on the results of an online survey, this report from the EPE Research Center provides an analysis of teachers' views on the Common Core State Standards. The National Survey of Teacher Perspectives on the Common Core report offers important insights into survey respondents’ views regarding their awareness of the standards, the training they have received to implement them in the classroom, and a range of other related topics. Readiness to put the CCSS into practice has emerged as a critical challenge not only for individual teachers, but also for their schools, districts, and states. The report provides new information about how prepared teachers feel to teach the standards to their students and how prepared they believe their students are to master them. It also presents data on teachers' perspectives with respect to the preparedness of the larger institutions and systems in which they work.

This new report, produced by the EPE Research Center in partnership with Education First, a national education policy and strategic consulting firm, provides an update on states’ progress toward creating plans for implementing the Common Core State Standards. Moving Forward: A National Perspective on States’ Progress in Common Core State Standards Implementation Planning serves as a follow-up to our January 2012 Preparing for Change report, which detailed the steps states are taking to implement common standards. Our new study analyzes results from a summer 2012 50-state survey in which states reported on the status of their planning activities in the areas of teacher professional development, curriculum and instructional materials, and teacher-evaluation systems. The results indicate that most states are further along in their planning than they were one year ago in key areas widely considered to be necessary for successful implementation of the new standards.

This new report, produced by the EPE Research Center in partnership with Education First, a national education policy and strategic consulting firm, describes states’ progress toward creating plans for implementing the Common Core State Standards. Preparing for Change: A National Perspective on Common Core State Standards Implementation Planning provides insight into the steps states are taking to implement common standards and reports results from a 50-state survey examining transition planning. The survey results offer specific details on the status of state plans for changes in teacher professional development, curriculum and instructional materials, and teacher-evaluation systems. The results find that a handful of states are particularly far along in their plans to implement the CCSS, but that most states still have a long way to go in their planning efforts.

This special report from the EPE Research Center examines teaching quality and student learning. It summarizes the state of research on teaching quality, the links to student learning, and the contextual factors that play an intermediating role in teaching and learning. It focuses on literature from both the K-12 system and the early-childhood arena that discusses teacher professional qualifications, models to improve and gauge quality instruction, and examples from the field. These findings are complemented by an overview of promising strategies for improving teaching quality and an original environmental scan of the investments made by major foundations in the area of teaching quality, including a list of the most influential actors in this area.

This new report from the EPE Research Center finds that barely one-half of students in the nation's 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma. But the study, a successor to 2008’s Cities in Crisis, also discovers signs of improvement, with rising graduation rates and narrowing urban-suburban gaps in recent years.

This EPE Research Center report examines a number of key issues facing students with disabilities ranging from the demographics of the population, educational settings, overrepresentation of certain student groups, achievement, high school completion, and transitions to adulthood.

This report released by America's Promise Alliance and prepared by EPE Research Center, finds that approximately half of the students served by the principal school systems in the nation's 50 largest cities are graduating from high school. The report is a predecessor to 2009’s Cities in Crisis.

Analyses from the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center estimate that over 120,000 public high school students in the state of Texas failed to graduate with a regular diploma last school year. To put this crisis in perspective, the number of non-graduates is about double the combined number of students entering 9th grade in the state’s seven largest school districts. Seventy percent of all non-graduates were members of minority racial and ethnic groups, indicating that minority students are disproportionately affected by this graduation crisis.

In this study, the EPE Research Center performed a systematic and objective analysis of state academic standards in science education in order to characterize the extent to which these documents cover the theory of biological evolution.

The EPE Research Center now offers customized K-12 data based on years of its cutting-edge research. Our data sets are unique in the American K-12 education field because of their relevance, breadth, depth, and ease of use.

As the nation weathers difficult economic times, many states are facing particularly heavy pressure to secure enough funding to provide a quality education for their students. In fact, some states have already proposed or announced budget cuts on precollegiate educational spending.

For the first time in its 13-year history, Quality Counts provides a comprehensive examination of state efforts to address the challenge of educating English-language learners (ELLs). Produced by Education Week and the EPE Research Center, Quality Counts 2009 maps the demographic trends of this diverse, rapidly growing group of students and highlights state policies that support English-learners.

Recent findings of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, show that although U.S. 4th and 8th graders scored above the international average on both mathematics and science assessments, its relative position compared to other countries did not change much over time, with the U.S. still lagging far behind top-performing countries.

While various studies have shown that students with different learning disabilities have benefitted academically from curricula and teaching methods tailored to meet their needs, most research finds significant achievement gaps between disabled and nondisabled students.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of childhood obesity in all age groups has increased two-fold over the last two decades. Advocates have recommended that schools offer classes on health and physical education courses as a way to promote a healthier lifestyle among the nation’s youths.

When creating their budgets, many school administrators are faced with the challenge of inconsistent per-pupil funding levels from year to year. The EPE Research Center explores that phenomenon by examining changes in statewide per-pupil expenditures from the 2001-02 through 2004-05 school years.

Such factors as teacher experience and qualifications or curricular standards are among the key elements of a school’s educational climate. But the physical conditions of school buildings and facilities also play a role in shaping a child’s educational experience.

Due to difficulties in staffing targeted subject areas, school administrators often find themselves forced to assign teachers to positions or subject areas for which they may not be certified. In order to address this problem, some states have implemented policies to regulate the numbers of out-of-field and uncertified teachers in all K-12 schools.

Some critics have argued that focusing on a narrow set of subjects effectively marginalizes the attention devoted to other parts of the curriculum. The content of state exit exams offers one barometer to gauge the emphasis placed on various subject areas by the states.

Although data from state testing programs show increasing proportions of students reaching or surpassing the proficiency bar, some experts question the validity of such gains. Those results have raised eyebrows, in part, because trend lines are rising much more rapidly on state-developed tests than on the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as The Nation’s Report Card.

To help ensure that non-college-going graduates are prepared for the demands of the labor market, some states offer students the opportunity to earn career-technical endorsements as they work towards their high school diplomas

Many teachers, parents, and policy makers see reducing class size as a way to improve how students learn and teachers instruct. In comparison with students in larger classes, various studies suggest that students enrolled in small classes tend to interact more with their teachers, exhibit more pro-social behavior, and have higher achievement scores.

Few would dispute the economic, educational, and social advantages a college education can offer. Those benefits, however, must be weighed against the costs of postsecondary education, which have risen significantly in recent years. Quality Counts 2007 reported an analysis of college costs based on data from the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.

The EPE Research Center explored student access to instructional computers by calculating the number of computers available for a typical classroom (about 16 students at the primary level) and compared those results for schools with high versus low concentrations of racial and ethnic minority students .

Student performance data, a central feature of school report cards, has become the major basis for educational accountability decisions in recent years. Even with that rise of performance-based accountability, other key factors influencing student achievement—school learning environment, teacher working conditions—have received scant public attention.

Proponents of educational technology have argued that teachers who are themselves competent users of instructional technology can deliver more innovative lessons in the classroom, increase the capacity of their students to use technology, and ultimately facilitate student learning.

Analysts often quantify the impact of socioeconomic inequalities within education by examining differential patterns of school inputs and outputs (such as per-pupil funding levels and test scores, respectively). However, inequalities can also be reflected in discrepancies related to instructional practice and learning tools, one example being student access to instructional computers.

In the U.S., children typically start their formal education around the age of five. With increased attention to the performance of even the youngest students, many states are enacting policies to ensure students arrive at school prepared to succeed on day one.

The majority of local school funding is determined by property taxes; thus, school districts in wealthier areas are traditionally able to raise more funds than schools in poorer areas. Because some scholars and policy makers believe that the amount of money spent per student is tied to academic achievement, many states have made efforts to make their school funding wealth neutral.

All but seven states and the District of Columbia formally evaluate teachers for their performance in the classroom. Although such evaluations occur on a periodic basis, some states require that they occur more frequently than others.

In Quality Counts 2008, the EPE Research Center found that most states supplement their academic content standards by providing teachers in core academic subjects with resources or guides to help them implement those standards.

In Quality Counts 2008, the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center found that a majority of states provide supplementary resources or guides to support state academic standards for teachers of special needs students, yet fewer than half of the states in the country provide teachers of gifted and talented students with supplementary resources.

Under current U.S. Department of Education regulations, states can exercise considerable latitude in choosing methods to calculate high school graduation rates under the No Child Left Behind Act. Most states use calculation methods that tend to produce inflated graduation rates by including unreliable dropout data in their formulas.

High school graduates earn higher annual incomes, commit fewer crimes, and have lower rates of substance abuse than those without a high school diploma. Yet, according to Diplomas Count 2008 a student is lost from the graduation pipeline every 13 seconds of the school year.

Formative assessments and item banks are two tools teachers can use throughout the year to check their students’ progress against benchmarks of knowledge and understanding. The EPE Research Center found that 21 states provide educators with formative assessments and/or item banks linked to state standards for the 2007-08 school year.

Compared to unadjusted per-pupil expenditures (PPEs), the Research Center found that in the 2004-05 school year, the difference between cost-adjusted and unadjusted PPEs was more than $1,000 in 12 states.

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, many school districts have increased their focus on reading and mathematics at the expense of other subjects. But some states appear to consider exposure to the arts an important component of college readiness.